Eleanor came slowly awake, growing conscious of Robin sleeping beside her. She felt his humid warmth under the duvet, his back to her, the smell of sweat and farts collecting under the covers like a handful of old pennies. She woke fully smelling his male smell, still not used to it six months after he’d come home. Nuzzling his back lightly, not wanting to wake him, Eleanor slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the door, managing to get her robe silently off the hook and leave the room.
Four hundred fifty square feet of apartment had been more than she could afford, but she’d wanted a modern apartment after all the rat traps she’d lived in, and who needed food, anyway. With Robin contributing it was more affordable, but the space hadn’t been much for one person and it was cramped for two. This was especially true with Robin being tall and drawn to big things, the espresso maker that took up half the counter and his weights on the floor with his yoga mat unrolled beside them. Not that he owned much, just the fitness things and the espresso maker and the clothes he’d shyly asked her to help him buy after he’d left the army.
It didn’t really bother her, but Eleanor was particularly conscious of his stuff, his Rob-ness, on this their wedding day. Nothing was temporary anymore. Everything was temporary, life was temporary, but they weren’t, or they wouldn’t be after City Hall.
Eleanor wanted a cup of coffee but the espresso maker would wake Rob, so she filled the electric kettle and turned it on, getting out a comforting Red Rose tea bag, her aunt’s brand, and her favourite mug with the leaping rabbit in a hoodie from the Art Gallery of Ontario. She and Cait had gone there, Cait with her arty inclinations, a props assistant now but aspiring to be a production designer in the movies. They’d got talking on the subway shortly after Eleanor had moved to Toronto, which was the way Cait rolled. She’d met her boyfriend Edi when the airline lost her bag after her beach week in Mexico, Edi being a customer service agent who couldn’t have been nicer, and he’d got her bag delivered the next day with everything still in it, even the bottle of tequila for her father. He’d been touched by her upset about losing the presents for her family, being close to his family, too.
Cait and Edi would be the witnesses at their wedding. Her Aunt Joan and Rob’s mother, Billie, had come down on the bus from Huntsville yesterday, so they would be six. That was all they wanted, given Rob’s trouble with crowds since coming home from his peacekeeping stint in Mali. He didn’t trust crowds, or at least what might be hiding inside them. Therapy was helping, but there was no reason to push it for their wedding.
His mother had asked if he would wear his medals but that was a non-starter. Eleanor had come home from work one day not long after he’d got back to find Rob on the couch cutting up the ribbons, his eyes as grey as clouds, slashing away with the kitchen scissors, threads of striped fabric on his sweats and the couch and the area rug. She’d say he was bawling like a baby but they’d known each other forever and she’d never seen him cry like this, a stoic little boy who’d sat on the ground giving his bloody knees a puzzled look with one repressed sob.
Her heart had constricted, and she’d suffered a small fear (that he’d cut the couch) and a big one (that he’d stab her) but she managed to say in a calm voice, “Would you like to give me the scissors, Rob?” He froze, his head bowed, and he came back to himself to hand over the scissors, looking shamefaced. She’d sat down beside him and got shredded ribbon all over her work clothes, slowly raising one hand to his shoulder where he let her keep it for a while before tumbling into her lap and breaking down completely.
Did he want to tell her about it?
No, he did not.
The kettle boiled and Eleanor filled her cup, getting a spoon to swirl the tea bag around before taking it out when the tea was still weak and putting it in the dish by the sink. She wasn’t supposed to have too much caffeine because of her migraines, although she hadn’t had one for a long time. Taking her cup over to the glass doors, she looked past the windy balcony to the lake. The apartment towers in Liberty Village were far enough apart that she could see interrupted views of Lake Ontario between the buildings to watch the water sparkle and the sailboats fly.
No sparkle and no boats today, the sailors all gone home. Aside from being their wedding day, it was a glum day, cloudy and damp, November the eighth. Rob didn’t like being on the twenty-first floor, something about how high the firefighters’ ladders could reach, but she didn’t think it was really that. Crowds were difficult and being exposed was difficult, too. He needed to be part of a small wolf pack running close to the ground, preferably armed. She thought they’d probably move in a few months, and maybe even go back to Huntsville the way her aunt and his mother wanted. But they hadn’t even started talking about moving, and Eleanor would have the view for a while longer. That and her few solitary moments at the start of the day.
“Good morning,” Rob said, coming out of the bedroom. He wore his usual grey sweatpants and nothing on top, which never stopped being hot, Rob pumped with weights and his construction jobs, all those brown curls and warm eyes and handsome mouth. The tattoo on his upper arm in old-fashioned letters said Sarge + Ellie ∞. Who was this Sarge, she’d asked him after his promotion, when he’d come home on leave with his new tat. Another time she’d said, “What happens when you aren’t a sergeant anymore?” Then she’d realized he always would be.
Rob pulled her into an embrace and said, “The big day, I guess.”
Nuzzling his neck. “I’m not sure it’s a big day if you’re only guessing.”
“If I modify ‘big day’ with ‘I guess.’” A joke about their grade 10 English teacher, Mr. Marlow, who’d said he would be doing them a disservice if he sent them into the world with no command of grammar. Such comfort to speak in shorthand with someone you’d known forever.
Their big day and Rob’s comfort and muscles, and Eleanor felt herself dampen and wanted to pull him back into the bedroom. They had time. Everything was planned. But when her hand drifted south, he took it back gently, saying, “That’s tonight. We’re going to do it up right.” Eleanor realized he’d gone through the day in his head, visualizing everything step-by-step, as thorough as the army had made him and as careful as the psychiatrist advised, since this was on the spectrum of a stressful day, or at least an emotional one.
“You want a coffee?” he asked, teasing: “Instead?”
Showing him her tea. “I figure I didn’t wait a year and a half to see the migraine doctor so I could ignore what she said.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed, since underneath the trauma, Rob was an easygoing man who was slowly coming back to her, intelligent and dependable and respectful of her choices in ways not every man managed. After firing up the espresso machine, he prepared their breakfast. The yoghurt, the fruit, and homemade granola. Aunt Joan’s recipe, Joan being an old backpacking hippie who had landed in Huntsville after Eleanor’s mother took off, moving in on what was supposed to be a temporary basis with her reverend brother, as he was at the time.
But Joan had stayed, mostly, reading peoples’ tarot cards, waitressing in a couple of tea shops, working the cash at the IGA and then at Metro, whatever she could find. Huntsville accepted a certain type of eccentricity: hardworking, keeping to yourself, not having any use for the summer people and able to hold your beer and substances, the region having been known for its weed plantations long before legalization.
Rob cranked up a podcast they liked while they ate their breakfast, getting through the morning, Eleanor would never know how.
She’d bought her dress at Nordstrom. Off the sales rack at Nordstrom, nothing resembling a wedding dress, but she hadn’t wanted one. She’d heard a couple of higher-ups talking about the sales rack at work, Eleanor’s certificate in marketing having got her a job in fundraising at the hospital. For two years after graduation, her BComm had got her nothing beyond the type of jobs her aunt got with a grade 12 education, most of them either in Huntsville or Gravenhurst or around Petawawa when Robin had been based there. But the certificate had landed her a steady job with a semi-decent salary and a chance of promotion if she decided to stay. Eleanor liked it, most of her work being in legacy marketing, helping design campaigns to inspire people to leave money to the hospital. The higher-ups, mostly women, had to dress well to meet with rich people, and not long ago she’d heard one of them say, “The sales rack at Nordstrom saves my life.”
The colleague she’d been speaking to hadn’t known about it, and the higher-up explained where it was and Eleanor made note. There was no reason why she couldn’t add Nordstrom to her list, since there was one in the Eaton Centre along with Clara Crosby and every other brand outlet where she’d be more likely to find a dress she could afford, a special dress for her wedding that wasn’t so special she couldn’t use it again. Rob and she were agreed on that. They’d spend their money on a honeymoon this winter, which might be skiing (which they could drive to) or somewhere warm, although getting on airplanes was a problem, their resemblance to helicopters.
Did he want to tell her?
“Those poor people,” he said. “You’ve never met nicer.”
Eleanor had walked over to the Eaton Centre after work, going in the north door and pausing without meaning to at the entrance to Nordstrom, the bright lights and whiteness beyond it like diamonds and snow. She’d lived in Toronto for more than a year but didn’t come to places like this, having no outstanding curiosity about how the One Per Cent lived. She’d met some of them when they came into Gravenhurst and Huntsville from their lakefront cottage-mansions, most of them predictable and careless and ordinary.
Giving herself a mental shake, Eleanor headed for the escalator and rode it up to the second floor, getting off and walking straight ahead almost to the rear of the store before turning right. And there it was, or they were, as the woman had said. Sales racks. Crammed.
Flicking through them, Eleanor found most of the merchandise on sale wasn’t dresses and most of the dresses were sack-like and solemn, taking themselves too seriously. That was a mercy since even on sale most of them cost more than anything Eleanor had ever bought in her life, including her laptop. Yet once she got over the sticker shock, she collected four hangers, one with a very pretty sleeveless dress with big reddish flowers on a white background and grey-green leaves. It had been marked down three times but it was still more than she wanted to spend. Eleanor hoped it wouldn’t fit, but there weren’t many she could even try.
“Would you like to me to put them in a change room while you continue shopping?”
Eleanor turned to find a pleasant-looking saleslady with her hand out for the dresses. She wasn’t glam. Middle years and speaking with a slight South Asian accent.
“I don’t see anything else,” Eleanor said. “I might as well try these ones.”
“Pretty dresses,” the saleswoman said, leading her toward the change rooms. “Perhaps for taking south this winter.”
“We’re thinking about our honeymoon,” Eleanor began, and grew conscious not of lying but of misleading the pleasant lady. Yet surely she could see from Eleanor’s clothes that she wasn’t the type to shop for cruise wear, especially in a place like this. And Rob had paid too much for her ring, but it wasn’t grand.
Eleanor put the flower dress on first to make sure it didn’t fit. When it did, she took it off hastily and tried the others. A boxy grey one, and what was she thinking? A blue one, when blue died on her. A lovely pale green sheath a size smaller than she wore and well, hips. Trying on the flower dress again, Eleanor knew it was perfect and twirled the full skirt in the mirrors, loving the look but knowing that she couldn’t afford it, or shouldn’t afford it. Getting dressed and taking the dresses back outside, still telling herself she couldn’t, shouldn’t (but it’s my wedding!) she found herself walking to the cash, where the saleslady was helping an arty-looking older woman with an unexpected half-buzz haircut. Rubbernecking, Eleanor saw the woman was buying a Stella McCartney blouse that would cost Rob and her two months’ rent.
“I’m a jacket person,” the saleslady said, taking the Stella off its hanger, “and I’ve been admiring the one you’re wearing. Who is it?”
“I bought it years ago,” the arty woman said. But she obligingly took off her black leather jacket and checked the label, which was hanging off on one side.
“Stella McCartney,” she said, looking surprised. “At least I’m consistent. Can you steam the blouse for me?” she asked, and turned to Eleanor. “Maybe you’d like to go first.”
The arty woman seemed to mean it, and Eleanor was reminded of what Americans said about Canadians being so nice. She thanked her and said it didn’t matter, still hoping to find the strength to throw the dresses on the counter and run. But carelessness seemed to be catching, and as the woman worked her phone, Eleanor waited for the saleslady to return.
“I love steaming,” the lady said when she did, putting the blouse into a garment bag. “I always forget, but it’s very satisfying. Not that I’d want to do it all day.”
“I like doing the dishes, but I wouldn’t want to be a dishwasher,” the woman said. A matron walking by in a fur coat whinnied as if they were talking dirty. It turned out the blouse woman knew her, and after she paid for the jacket, they went for a coffee.
The moment had come, her heart beating crazy fast, Eleanor put the hangers on the desk, saying this and not these ones. As the saleslady reached for the flower dress, Eleanor held it back, blushing painfully and asking in a mouse voice, “There isn’t anything wrong with it, is there?”
“Not at all,” the saleslady replied, giving her a barely perceptible glance. “It’s only a couple of seasons past, and I always say, ‘Oh, I love this dress.’ I can’t stop wearing it!”
“It’s my wedding dress,” Eleanor said. “My fiancé was in the army. And, poppies.”
They wouldn’t have a moment where the church doors would open and Rob would see her dress for the first time as she walked up the aisle. So she went into the bathroom, where she could do her makeup and hair while Rob got changed in the bedroom. He did it quickly, the door soon opening into the living room. He’d hired a limo that would pick them up downstairs and he’d be watching the clock, but they had plenty of time. Eleanor jumped around doing up the back zipper herself, then did her hair in a simple updo held with a grey-green ribbon to match the leaves on her dress. A bit of eyeliner and mascara—she never wore much makeup—and the perfect lipstick she and Cait had found that didn’t try to match her dress but said hello to it. Her black pumps would do. She’d be paying off the dress for months, but the pumps were fine, they were classic, and she opened the bathroom door.
Rob turned from the window, looking so handsome in his new dark suit. So very handsome. “Oh, I love you so much,” Eleanor cried. They met in an embrace that had to respect her lipstick and their new clothes, holding each other as if they were glass, which in Rob’s case might be true.
“You look beautiful,” he said, which she never thought was right. But Eleanor could accept it on her wedding day, especially when he whispered, “Love you forever,” and oh those deep grey eyes. They looked out the balcony doors until the limo buzzed from downstairs, when Eleanor floated over to get her good coat, which wasn’t warm enough for November, but she wasn’t going to wear her parka. She floated to the elevator and out the main entrance into the long car, which inside had small white Christmas lights on the ceiling that glittered like fireflies.
The limo took them to the Delta Chelsea Hotel, where they found their small family waiting outside, as they’d arranged. Rob’s mother was leaning on her walker, meaning her MS was acting up, and Aunt Joan wearing slacks since she disliked her thick legs. They looked for all the world like a queer couple, and by now maybe they were. Eleanor had texted them a secret picture of her wedding dress, and under her open coat, Rob’s mother wore a grey knit dress and a nice grey and green scarf, while Joan wore light grey slacks and a white button-up shirt under a man’s steel-grey suit jacket.
Unexpectedly successful, Eleanor saw in relief. They got out of the limo to hug them, and as his mother leaned one hand against the limo, Rob took her walker and wrestled politely with the turbaned driver over its possession. The driver won, and stowed the walker before closing the trunk with a soft thwack that was the soundtrack for Rob helping his mother into the limo.
“Now, you haven’t forgotten anything,” Billie said, as soon as she was securely seated. “We’ve still got time to go back to the apartment. You’ve got the licence, and ID, and Rob”—as he got in—“you’ve got the rings.”
“We’re okay, Mum,” he said, and did up her seatbelt.
After Rob’s father had died four years ago, Billie had experienced a burst of energy. She’d sold the business, Rob’s father (ex-army) having built up a cottage security and maintenance firm, Your Home Is Your Castle. His mother hadn’t asked Rob before selling it, knowing he wouldn’t move back, but it remained a sore point that she hadn’t even asked.
Instead she’d advertised online and found a buyer in the U.S., a stranger named Whit Whittaker, who had arrived in town looking slightly puzzled but saying it looked like a good deal and he was undergoing life changes, which obviously meant a divorce. Whit had settled in, a genial fellow, soon popular. He was always on the verge of leaving, but a good part of the town was always on the verge of leaving, and these days few people could afford to.
It was a successful transaction in every respect, but after it was done and sealed, Rob’s mother collapsed with a bad MS attack, not telling anybody, sometimes half crawling out the back door to her not-deer-proof garden and relying on the venison in her freezer. She lived on Brunel Road, big rural lots, so the neighbours hadn’t noticed immediately, and Eleanor had been in North Bay finishing her degree. Finally, her nearest neighbours grew concerned at not seeing her, and after halfway battering down her door, they saw enough to contact Rob, even though Billie didn’t want to shackle him. He’d got leave to come home and was afraid at first he’d have to stay. But Joan had offered to move in, and she’d been there ever since.
Not the first time she’d done that, of course.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Joan said.
“You’ll have to give me a shilling,” Eleanor told her. “I was thinking about my parents back in England, and whether they’d loved one other. I mean at first.”
“They have pennies in England,” Billie grouched.
“Don’t you go getting all nervous,” Joan said, exactly as Robin’s father used to say. And if she’d taken his place, good for them.
Eleanor had always known the bare bones of her parents’ love story. How they’d met at Cambridge, both Canadians, him a clergyman and a lecturer in theology, so long installed in England that he’d become tweedy and wry. He’d had no intention of leaving, probably no intention of marrying, but then he’d met Eleanor’s mother.
“She was a dazzler, all right.”
Joan had sat Eleanor down to tell her the rest of the story when she was eighteen and heading off to university.
“You got the Crosby colouring, but that’s her mouth. Her nose. Good choice,” she’d said, rubbing her big one. “Maybe she wasn’t so sure of herself back then. When you come right down to it, she set her sights on being a big fish in a small pond, at least at first. It was her idea to come home. Your Pops would get a church, and he’d rise through the ranks. I think she liked the vibe of him being a bishop and her being a scholar.”
A few problems with that. Eleanor had assumed her father started drinking when her mother had walked out, but Joan said he’d always been a friend of the bottle. Her mother’s first miscalculation lay in forgetting the old-fashioned nature of home, where his fondness for a drink and his imperial arrogance (translating directly from Latin) weren’t likely to endear him to the higher-ups in the church. The other miscalculation, which Joan didn’t mention, was that her mother had got pregnant at Cambridge. Eleanor was a mistake, and the church was surely able to count on its fingers. Her parents must have found the parish in Huntsville appealing partly because the locals were ignorant of their wedding date. It would be a pit stop, a cleanse, an interlude. That must have been the intention.
“I have to say, she saw the lay of the land pretty quickly. The church was glad he took himself out of the way and was happy to leave him there. And I want you to understand: what happened wasn’t about you, it was about her. Leaving was about her. Disappearing was about her. You could have been the Baby Jesus and she would still have taken off. Women could do that by the nineties. No regrets, coyote. Folks still hated you for it, but you got to put yourself first.”
Eleanor had been five months old when her mother had left and Joan had moved in. Her father never seemed to have considered leaving Huntsville, even when he lost his church. He just went to work for the Department of Highways, which meant he could spend his nights drinking openly at the pub. He also continued to drink himself into a stupor in his car. Rob’s father had to look for him in winter when he was out making his rounds, keeping kids from breaking into cottages. Her father didn’t break in, but he’d pull into a driveway with his bottle, never drinking and driving, but risking freezing to death when he passed out.
It took Eleanor years to realize that her father might have wanted to die. He was not quite committing suicide, but he was letting God take him if He chose. She’d also come to understand the look in his eye on the awful day when he’d stood up behind his desk and fallen down with a fatal stroke. When she’d caught him, she hadn’t been able to decipher the expression on his face, but she’d gradually come to think it of it as relief. He’d finally escaped what he’d called, at barely fifty, his “over-long life.”
Her parents’ names were written on the marriage certificate. Her father had also left her the art he’d picked up in secondhand shops, which her aunt had cherished some hopes of after he’d died. But no, the local secondhand guy told her, that was a nineteenth century student copy, not a Leonardo. “We’re not going to sell a Leonardo for ten bucks.” But there were times when Eleanor felt like praying hands, and she liked hanging the picture on her wall.
All her mother had given Eleanor was her first name as a middle name, and that was it. No letters, no sign of her, no way of getting in touch. Her entire family was in the limousine, a tree stripped of most of its branches. Her father gone, her mother, Rob’s father, Rob’s sister, who had always been sickly and died from encephalitis.
“You thinking about moving home?” Billie asked.
“We like it here,” Rob said, as if that was that. Although Eleanor knew it wasn’t.
Cait and Edi were waiting outside Old City Hall as the limo pulled up. Cait was holding a carrier bag, and after they’d climbed the steps to get out of the cold—the car would be back in an hour—she opened her bag to pull out flowers, their surprise wedding present. Spring bloomed under the ancient wood of the staircase and pillars, Cait having chosen the most beautiful bridal bouquet. Eleanor’s eyes filled with tears: full-blown white roses and ranunculus and peonies with eucalyptus leaves and white berries, with a smaller bridesmaid’s version for Cait.
More rustling in the bag, and Edi pinned a white boutonnière on Rob’s lapel before getting Rob to return the favour, while Cait gave the older ladies (their coats over Billie’s walker) each a corsage of the prettiest white roses that thought they were pink. Cait had also borrowed a camera and took photos of Eleanor and Robin, then with the ladies, then asked for help from a friendly looking guy in a powder-blue tux with the wedding ahead of them. Eleanor suspected he was the groom, but he seemed underemployed and happy to help.
The pity was that Cait and Edi didn’t think they could get married any time soon. Edi’s mother disapproved of him being with a white girl, while Cait’s father was borderline racist, and “borderline” was being polite. Cait hoped that her father would eventually realize that after too many daughters, he would finally get a son who shared his passion for Manchester United. She was counting on Manchester United, her father being a Yorkshireman by birth. That was so sadly tangential, but it might end up being what worked.
Cait and Edi had everything in common. Neither was tall and both were formal, him calling her Caitlyn and her always saying Edikan. They spoke in slightly staccato voices and they loved travelling, which Edi’s job made possible. They were also ambitious, with Cait’s production designer plans and Edi’s wish of becoming an air traffic controller.
They’d talked about that when they’d had their pre-wedding drink at the Communist’s Daughter on Dundas Street, a small dive with cheap beer. Edi had been gloomy after reading the latest news about the digital towers going up in Europe, the air traffic rooms manned by a decreasing number of controllers. This was the future their generation faced, and Eleanor and Rob were getting married knowing it. Cheers.
Edi told them he might be better off keeping his customer service job. “They talk about service jobs, but what they really mean is servant jobs,” he said. “That’s all they’re leaving us, with society retreating into feudalism. We’re the new servant class, permitted the magnificent chance of taking care of Them”—he said it in capitals—“while any hope of doing anything rewarding, and I include the financial, disappears into the ether. Only artists like Caitlyn are allowed a little leeway to stage pageants for the masses.”
“I don’t call myself an artist.”
“An artisan,” Edi said fondly. “Which is a better fit for my neo-medievalism.”
“I’ve been thinking of getting my certificate in plumbing or electrical,” Rob said. News to Eleanor, and he knew it was. This was how Rob was able to tell her important things lately, and it might have meant he was thinking they should go back to Huntsville, where Whit Whittaker would hire him in a greased second. But plumbers and electricians were scarce in Toronto, too, and they would have a choice. “I’ll end up an old-fashioned tradesman, I guess.”
“The member of a feudal guild,” Edi replied. “You’ll have one of the few union jobs left. Society has become a palimpsest.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Eleanor said.
“It refers to an old vellum manuscript from which the writing has been erased and written over. Except that traces of the original writing remain.”
Eleanor paused to consider this. “I often think of the way each second of our lives is erased as time flows forward. But what happens remains written on each of us. I suppose we’re like palimpsests ourselves.”
“You’re far too clever for me,” Edi said, turning to Rob. “How do you keep up?”
Rob and Edi had liked each other on sight. They could talk for hours about Africa, which Edi had visited. His parents were from Nigeria, although he was born in Toronto. One of his uncles had taken his family to Leeds, which explained Manchester United. Edi had visited Leeds, too. He was their sophisticate. Eleanor had never left Ontario, nor seen the sea.
“I don’t think any of us can be too clever these days,” Rob said. “You’re right. These new political guys, the Crawleys, they’re putting us down so they can take a hundred per cent of the economy and not just ninety-nine.”
“I’m a beggar,” Eleanor said. “The way Edi is thinking. Any day now they’re going to put me on a heating vent at King and Bay Streets with an empty Timmy’s cup. ‘Alms for the University Health Network. Alms for the University Health Network.’”
“We’re all looking for something, aren’t we?” Edi asked.
As she stood in front of the officiant, her bouquet quivering in her hands, Eleanor told herself to remember every second of her wedding. She wasn’t going to do it again. This was the turning point of her life, the fulcrum on which her past and future balanced.
But already there were gaps and distractions, as there had been all her life. What had she been doing on the eighth of November ten years ago? She had no idea, her memories not much more than a highlight reel of the past. Nor was she entirely sure how she had floated into the wedding chapel behind the officiant, although she remembered very clearly the moment in the main office when Rob had introduced Edi as his best man.
“And a better man than me,” he’d said.
To which Edi had replied, “Patently absurd.”
And she’d thought, Why, they could be brothers.
Now the officiant announced the title of the poem they had chosen, one their English teacher Mr. Marlow had recited. Somehow his tenor voice was in the room as well, harmonizing with the resonant baritone of the officiant, so the poem sang itself to the chapel.
“‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. O no; it is an ever-fixéd mark, that looks on tempests, and is never shaken.’”
Eleanor’s eyes were damp. She always cried at weddings, apparently including her own.
“‘Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.’”
Eleanor glanced at Rob, who had stood at the edge of doom and come back to her. Then the poem was done and the officiant said the legal words, and after them the timeless ones they had chosen.
“Do you, Eleanor Elizabeth,” he began, and Eleanor had a sudden sense of her mother looking up from her desk, cocking her head to listen to something in the distance, like rainfall or birdsong, before going back to work.
“. . . in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do you part.”
“I do,” Eleanor said, and when the time came, Rob said more firmly, “I do,” and they were husband and wife, giving each other the rings Rob hadn’t forgotten.
“And now you may kiss.”
Afterwards they were outside on a cold November day, the sun out now, holding hands and laughing on the worn stone steps. Cait took more pictures, and Eleanor saw her aunt pulling a plastic bag from her pocket. Joan tore it open and tossed handfuls of metallic confetti in the air. You weren’t supposed to throw confetti at Old City Hall, but she threw handful after handful, and Eleanor looked up to see flecks of silver caught in the breeze, the sunlight making them sparkle, and she lifted her hands up to the sun, wanting the glitter to last forever.